Annually, millions of people visit a multitude of locations of historical significance. Whether the individuals are tourists, archaeologists, students or the like, they share a basic interest. Namely, these people visit historically significant locations to learn about the past.
Simply being present at a historical location has limited informational benefit. Accordingly, those interested in improving the quality of such visits have long attempted to create devices and methods by which visitors could have more enjoyable and informative tours. Traditionally, knowledgeable individuals serving as tour guides, paper maps and permanent physical markers were the most commonly found (and most useful) aids to a visitor. In recent years, however, technological developments in information delivery systems have found their place into the tourism and education industries, promising more comprehensive and reliable delivery of information to the visitor. More specifically, recent technological advances have yielded information systems such as that taught in U.S. Pat. No. 5,717,392 (the '392 Patent), entitled "Position Responsive, Hierarchically-Selectable Information Presentation System and Control Program". As its title indicates, the invention of the '392 patent provides multimedia output that is responsive to a user's location, speed, acceleration and directional orientation. More specifically, the '392 patent advances the prior art by providing information to the user which is hierarchically arranged, i.e., the longer a user stays in a particular location of historical significance, the greater amount of progressively more detailed historical information is provided.
The '392 patent, for its advantages over the prior art, is frought with limitations which restrict the extent to which the available information can be tailored or customized by a visitor to best suit the visitor's interest, needs or desires. More specifically, the '392 patent teaches providing information to a recipient according to a hierarchical arrangement which has been established by someone other than the recipient. To the average recipient, this restriction might not be significant. However, to the more interested student, curious sightseer or avid scholar, the predetermined hierarchy will be frustrating. This limitation can best be illustrated by reference to a historical event which has recently been revived by Hollywood-the D-Day invasion of Normandy.
A tourist visiting the beaches of Normandy and utilizing a device drawn to the '392 patent would, during the journey along the beach, be periodically informed of noteworthy events which took place at various points along the beach. For example, a user might hear "at this location on day one of the invasion, the first American unit reached shore at approximately 8:15 a.m.". The student could continue along the beach and be informed of other similarly noteworthy events. In the alternative, the user could remain standing in the area where the above-referenced message was provided and, sensing lack of movement from the area, the hierarchically arranged system might provide further information, such as "this unit comprised 120 soldiers, 27 of whom survived the initial landing". If the user remained in the same location for yet another predetermined period of time, still more detailed information would be automatically provided, such as, "the soldiers who survived the landing were . . .".
The audible information referenced above is representative. The '392 patent also teaches presentation of visual and tactile information, also according to the same basic hierarchical configuration. That is to say, the longer an individual remains at a given point, the progressively more detailed information will be provided.
The '392 patent also teaches providing such hierarchically prearranged information responsive to a user's speed, acceleration and directional orientation. These additional factors notwithstanding, the information presented is still presented in a hierarchically arranged format whereby the specific hierarchy has been predetermined and is not subject to deviation by the user.
This is problematic if the user desires to selectively receive only certain information or if the user desires to "scroll" forward and backward within a certain body of information. More specifically, if a user's location triggered the system to present a combination of video and audio information, the user would be unable to view the video segment at a speed selected by the user, nor would the user be able to rewind the particular data and re-view the information again-maybe even at a different speed. Additionally, even if the user was able to locate the specific occurrence of a particular event, such as the landing of a particular unit on the beach, unless the information system was predesigned to include information about subsequent movement of the unit in the ensuing days, no such information would be available. Accordingly, a needing exists for an information delivery system which is not constrained in the delivery of information by predetermined hierarchical arrangements. There is an additional need for an information display system which allows a user to manipulate both the content and delivery of the information according to the user's own preferences, desires and interests.